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Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

useplunk.com

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Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#21

Post by boberoni »

Congrats on launching to HackerNews! First step on a journey of many.

Some Feedback:

- The biggest words on the landing page are "Behavioural Email Tool" but I don't know what this means. Maybe I'm not in your market.

- As I read through what Plunk does, it sounds more like "email automation". However, Plunk is not like other email automation because... (insert your wildest dreams)

- Your pricing is too low. In the wise words of patio11, "Charge more!" For a detailed guide to pricing SaaS and how to think about your pricing, check out patio11's writing on the Stripe blog[1]

- There's a typo in your free plan: it should be "1 seat", not "1 seats".

- Don't offer "Amazing Support" on your free plan. Reason (1) is that users on the free plan tend to squeeze the most support out of you, and they're not even paying you. You can reach out to help them if you want, but don't promise support to free users. Reason (2) is that adding support is a good incentive for a serious business to upgrade to the pro plan. If I'm a business who's success/revenue relies on Plunk for my success, I surely would upgrade from a plan without support to one with support.

[1] https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/saas-pricing

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#22

Post by djbusby »

driaug wrote: post #6
letterlib wrote: post #5

I wish there was more copy on this site about what the tool is and why it's useful. It looks interesting, but there's not enough information there for me to figure out if it's worth investing more. I could do the free version to find out, but it'd be nice to have a 2-3 min video or page that goes more in depth on the features that are there.

Valuable feedback, thank you for this! How would you feel about a demo video where I show you how to set it up and go through the features at the same time?

Don't waste my attention on the one-time setup BS. Show why it kicks ass in less than 30s.

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#23

Post by djbusby »

driaug wrote: post #18
eappleby wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the free version sends emails from the useplunk.com domain. If that is the case and some of those emails get marked as spam, won't all emails from the useplunk.com domain be more likely to be identified as spam?

I have built-in an automatic catch, if x% (still looking at what a good value for x is) of your emails bounce then your account gets quarantined and we see what we can do about that. That way we can prevent damage before other users get affected. Does that make sense?

Bounce is different than spam. Are you DMARC monitoring?

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#24

Post by driaug »

boberoni wrote: post #21

Congrats on launching to HackerNews! First step on a journey of many. Some Feedback: - The biggest words on the landing page are "Behavioural Email Tool" but I don't know what this means. Maybe I'm not in your market. - As I read through what Plunk does, it sounds more like "email automation". However, Plunk is not like other email automation because... (insert your wildest dreams) - Your pricing is too low. In the w…

Thank you very much for this incredible feedback, very kind of you!

I have already made some minor changes (fixed the typo and moved dedicated support).

Tomorrow I will be looking into altering the copy because I do understand what you are saying and have heard the same feedback about the term "behavioural email tool"from a couple of people!

Thank you very much for linking Stripe Atlas' guide, seems really helpful and in-depth!

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#25

Post by driaug »

djbusby wrote: post #23
driaug wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have built-in an automatic catch, if x% (still looking at what a good value for x is) of your emails bounce then your account gets quarantined and we see what we can do about that. That way we can prevent damage before other users get affected. Does that make sense?

Bounce is different than spam. Are you DMARC monitoring?

Sorry about the confusing wording, with bounce I mean both hard bounces, rejects and complaints (they are all monitored appropriately). They are all taken into account when calculating the % because they all have impact on the domain reputation.

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#26

Post by mousetree »

We use Segment->Vero as our main automated email marketing flow (~5M emails per month so not huge, we use Sendgrid via Vero to actually send the emails). We're looking to change to something more established like Iterable/Customer.io as Vero is very slow (UI and latency to send emails). More than happy to provide feedback as to what works/doesn't in your competitors.

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#27

Post by driaug »

mousetree wrote: post #26

We use Segment->Vero as our main automated email marketing flow (~5M emails per month so not huge, we use Sendgrid via Vero to actually send the emails). We're looking to change to something more established like Iterable/Customer.io as Vero is very slow (UI and latency to send emails). More than happy to provide feedback as to what works/doesn't in your competitors.

That would be very valuable to my development! You can always reach out to me at dries@useplunk.com

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#28

Post by driaug »

eappleby wrote: post #16
driaug wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valuable feedback, thank you for this! How would you feel about a demo video where I show you how to set it up and go through the features at the same time?

I agree that it would be helpful to show a simple use case on the home page. Maybe I'm not the target customer (although I am a soloproneur), but your user flow of (1) user clicking a button, (2) plunk receiving an event, (3) plunk sends an email, isn't really a problem that I have, since sending an email after an action is taken is pretty easy to manage. Are you are focusing on categorizing users into groups and sen…

A very big part of what Plunk does is giving you the opportunity to link multiple events together and delay emails. You can extend it to users that have clicked button A and B but not button C and send those an email after 5 days. Significantly harder to implement and a lot of code that isn't really used elsewhere!

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#29

Post by driaug »

mattl wrote: post #9

Name is similar to splunk.com -- I wonder if that'll be an issue?

Splunk is in a very different part of the landscape than Plunk so legally there isn't that much of an issue. Verbally it may be more confusing but it'll be fine!

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#30

Post by cercatrova »

driaug wrote: post #20
altdataseller wrote: post #11

"Completely free, no strings attached" * Sees that I can't email from my own domain unless I pay. (I'm all for paying, but don't say completely free, no strings attached)

I get what you mean by this! Let me clarify what my way of thought is behind the "completely free, no strings attached". I do not ask for your credit card info, I don't put you on a trial that magically renews at the end of the month, I don't offer you a sketchy sign-on deal with an unexpected bill at the end of the month. I try to make it as ethical as possible, unlike some other marketing/emailing tools. That is my…

Write all that as bullet points on the website itself
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